


Come Home

by msred



Series: Lessons [9]
Category: American (US) Actor RPF, Marvel Cinematic Universe RPF, Real Person Fiction
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Insomnia, Loneliness, Long-Distance Relationship, Sibling Love, sleeping alone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-12
Updated: 2021-02-12
Packaged: 2021-03-18 07:07:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29364471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/msred/pseuds/msred
Summary: Chris doesn’t know why he can’t sleep. He’d worked out during the day, had no caffeine after noon, and only drank one beer, shortly after dinner. He put his phone down 30 minutes before actually starting to try to sleep and had picked up a book instead. And, yeah, he’d turned on the tv over the fireplace and tuned it into Disney+ for some good, old-fashioned comfort watching, but that was only after almost 90 minutes of trying and failing to fall asleep in the silence and darkness. The temperature in the bedroom is what it always is when he sleeps and the sheets are soft and freshly washed.
Relationships: Chris Evans (Actor) & Original Female Character(s), Chris Evans (Actor)/Original Female Character(s)
Series: Lessons [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2019040
Comments: 20
Kudos: 29





	Come Home

**_November 2020_ **

Chris rolls - flops, really - from his back onto his stomach. Again. It’s bullshit, really. He’s been at this for nearly three hours. Dodger gave up on him after the first hour, huffing noisily and jumping down to go to his own bed, where he’s been happily snoring away since. Asshole.

Chris doesn’t know why he can’t sleep. He’d worked out during the day, had no caffeine after noon, and only drank one beer, shortly after dinner. He put his phone down 30 minutes before actually starting to try to sleep and had picked up a book instead. And, yeah, he’d turned on the tv over the fireplace and tuned it into Disney+ for some good, old-fashioned comfort watching, but that was only after almost 90 minutes of trying and failing to fall asleep in the silence and darkness. The temperature in the bedroom is what it always is when he sleeps and the sheets are soft and freshly washed. 

But then, if he’s being truly honest with himself, that’s actually the problem and he knows it. Well, the clean sheets themselves aren’t the problem. The problem is that they smell like his laundry detergent and not chamomile and bergamot body lotion and coconut-vanilla shampoo. And yeah, the room temperature is spot on, but the bed is cold, because he’s gotten used to sharing it. So therein lies the _real_ problem - he can’t sleep because She’s not here.

On the one hand, the two weeks they just spent together - one week planned and on the books for months now and the second decided in the moment, out of necessity, really - weren’t nearly long enough for him to feel like he got his fill of having her around. But in another way it was too long. Because he got used to it. He got used to her trying to get out of bed before him, without waking him up, every morning to go make breakfast - even if it was just cereal, or toast with almond butter and bananas - and to pretending she was successful and that he was still asleep, because he knew how happy it made her to do that for them. (She always said it was because she likes taking care of people she loves, but he thought it was because it made her feel more at home in his home. He didn’t mind either explanation, but he preferred his.) He got used to her delight every time she managed to steal Dodger away from him while they all played together in the backyard or piled together on the couch. He got used to her asking him what he was reading, only to end up putting her own book down and asking him to read to her. Or, alternatively, to her saying, _Oh, listen to this!_ and reading to him. (He didn’t care that she was reading novels and was sharing random snippets from the middle parts of the stories and he had no idea what was going on, he just liked hearing her read to him.) But most importantly, at least in regards to his current predicament, he got used to laying in bed and watching her comb out her hair then cover herself in that lotion before crawling into bed and tucking herself up next to him, their bodies touching from shoulder to waist, at least, and his arm wrapping around her to pull her even closer.

And that’s why he can’t sleep, because he doesn’t have that - because he doesn’t have _her_. He considers calling her - even turns his head so he’s facing the nightstand and starts to reach for his phone - but he stops himself. She’s got work in the morning, and it’s one of the days she actually has to lead live video classes, not a day to plan and grade and work on creating materials. She would answer, as long as her ringer is on (and if it’s not, she would call or text first thing in the morning with an apology) and she would pretend that he didn’t wake her up, that she’s not going to be exhausted tomorrow because of it. He doesn’t want that. Just because he’s suffering doesn’t mean she should be.

Honestly, though, that doesn’t even seem like the right way to put it. Because is it actually suffering when he can’t sleep because he has something so amazing that as soon as it’s taken from him, even temporarily, the loss has him tossing and turning from missing what he’s grown so attached to? It definitely doesn’t feel right when he thinks of it that way.

The thing is, he’s been having thoughts like this for a while, thoughts about how lately things only seem right when they include her, how every thought he has about the future seems to just naturally and involuntarily include her, how he’s started making decisions about upcoming jobs with her in mind. He can’t help but notice how well she fits into his family or how much Dodger has bonded to her. And he’s never really been as comfortable having another person share his space - except maybe Scott - as he is with her. In fact, just this morning, when he woke up to a completely empty room, he was almost surprised to find Dodger waiting by the patio door to go out, rather than walking in to the two of them coming back inside together. He’d somehow managed to forget, while sleeping and dreaming of her, that he’d dropped her off yesterday at the tiny general aviation airport a few miles down the road in Stow for her private flight back home.

He doesn’t want to do this anymore, the saying goodbye. Their whole relationship, the entire year and a half since they first met, has existed under the cloud of the next goodbye. Even the time they spent quarantining together, from late April, when she found out she wouldn’t actually be working in-person again last school year, to late August, when she had to return to Virginia because teachers at her school were being required to work in the school building, even though they were going to be continuing with distance learning, was a little dampened by the fact that he knew it was only temporary, as much as he liked to pretend that wasn’t the case. And that feeling grew more and more real the more time passed.

Any relationship for him will always mean goodbyes, he knows that. It’s just the nature of what he does. But there are ways, he knows, that the time together could be the norm and the goodbyes could be the outlier, rather than the other way around. 

He wants to share his home with her. The realization hits him not like a wave, crashing over him suddenly and forcefully, but like the tide, moving in slowly and almost imperceptibly until he looks down and there it is, like it’s always been right there. Natural as can be. Of course that’s what he wants, to have her here all the time to celebrate with and commiserate with. If the past several months - hell, the past two weeks - have taught him anything, it’s that. He could call her tomorrow and ask her to move in. He’s pretty sure she’d say yes. She might want to wait until the school year is over, which makes sense, but he really, really thinks that ultimately she’d say yes, even if it came with that caveat. And then he realizes - and this one _is_ like a wave, almost violent in its intensity - that he doesn’t actually want to ask for that. 

He doesn’t want to share his home with her. At least, he doesn’t want to share _just_ that. He wants to share his _life_ with her.

He’s not morally opposed to living together or anything like that (though he does feel that, if he’s going to ask her to literally uproot her life and move 1,000 miles away from everything she’s made her own over the past decade, he needs to be offering more than a place to stay), it’s just that he knows it won’t be long before living together is no longer enough, the same way that where they are right now has him feeling like something is missing. Say whatever you want about marriage being outdated, a function of the system, just a piece of paper - the list could go on - he wants it. He wants it for the practical reasons - legal recognition that they’re partners, security for her if anything should happen to him - and for the sentimental ones as well. His brain knows that a ceremony won’t make her any more his person than she already is, but his heart _wants_ it, and he wants it with her.

His eyes focus on his phone on the nightstand in front of him, and when he makes up his mind about what he’s about to do, he shifts onto his side, pushing up onto one elbow and reaching for the phone with his free hand. He brings it in until he can hold it in both hands and opens his text messages, scrolling down to his conversation with his baby sister - the one with _just_ her, none of the rest of the family.

  * **_Me: Hey, are you busy tomorrow?_**
  * **_Shan: Srsly?_** 🤨🤨



Okay, that was fair. Election day was probably the only day any of them had been anything close to ‘busy’ in the past several months, if you don’t count Zoom meetings. Still, fair or not, he ignores the question and moves on with another of his own.

  * **_Me: Feel like going shopping with your big brother? By appointment and socially distanced, of course._**
  * **_Shan: Of course. Would we happen to be shopping for something small and round and sparkly?_**



A part of him wonders how she knows, but another part screams that of COURSE she knows. Not only is he an open book with his family - and they read him clearly even when he’s not necessarily meaning for them to - but Shanna is also very close with Her (and, as she frequently likes to remind him, a big, big part of the reason they met in the first place) and probably understands their relationship on a deeper level than anyone other than the two of them.

  * **_Me: You only get to give input if I ask for it._**



He wants to do this himself, wants to find the ring that he believes she’ll love without someone else telling him what to choose. But he also wants some back-up assurance that he’s not going completely in the wrong direction. Shanna seems like the best person for that, both because of the close friendship between the two women and because she’s the least likely of his family members to overstep.

  * **_Me: Or if I’m leaning toward something truly awful._**
  * **_Shan: I’ll be on my best behavior. Just tell me when you’re picking me up._** 😉😙



His smile at that is interrupted by a yawn as he sends back the hug emoji (at least, he considers the one with the hands open right next to the face to be a hug, he doesn’t care what anyone else thinks), and he realizes his eyelids have started feeling heavy as he turns to put the phone back on the nightstand and wiggles his way back down the mattress until his head is on the pillow and the covers are pulled up around his shoulders. He feels like sleep might actually, finally, be in his very near future. 

***

When he wakes up the next morning, right after his workout, he’ll call a local jeweler he’s worked with before to set up an appointment that adheres to Covid protocols. And when he and Shanna get there, the man will already have lined up a number of rings based on the answers to some questions he asked Chris on the phone. It will take all of 15 minutes before he’s returning to the same ring for the fourth time and he decides that’s the one. He’ll look over his shoulder at his sister where she’s standing patiently on the other side of the room and she’ll give him a smile and a wink. He’ll spend five minutes completing paperwork then walk out with a happy heart and the promise of a ring in his hand in a couple weeks that he will, assuming he’s not judging everything totally incorrectly, put on her hand shortly after.

**Author's Note:**

> This story was very heavily inspired by Ron Pope's "Please Come Home to Me" (https://youtu.be/PDLWQF-20dA). If you've never heard it (or even if you have), I strongly suggest giving it a listen. Hell, I strongly suggest giving the whole album a listen, for that matter. I listened to it on repeat while writing this story, and have been listening to his entire discography on shuffle for the past few weeks.


End file.
